24 replies to this topic

[Felicitatem Parco]

I think we should limit discussion (in this particular thread) to if melting through ice should even be an option; the discussion of using jumpjets and weapons in water should be a different thread.

To be honest, I think melting through ice via heatsinks or getting the ice shot out from under you would be an exciting battlefield hazard.

[Tahawas Pitts]

To support a full sized truck you need about 14 inches of ice. Call that 3 tons of truck. That's with the weight split between 4 tires. A 20 ton mech would require between 7 and 8 feet of ice, and are generally bipeds. That is a heck of a lot of ice.

[Halfinax]

Tahawas Pitts, on 07 December 2011 - 07:38 PM, said:

To support a full sized truck you need about 14 inches of ice. Call that 3 tons of truck. That's with the weight split between 4 tires. A 20 ton mech would require between 7 and 8 feet of ice, and are generally bipeds. That is a heck of a lot of ice.

A full-sized truck would be distributing it's weight on about 24 inches of surface area though. A 'Mechs footpads cover a much larger surface area. I'm not going to get into exact PSI or anything, but a pickup actually has higher ppsi than an Abrams tank nearly 2 times in fact.

[Tahawas Pitts]

That's a good point obviously the pads of the feet on a mech must be huge, especially in comparison to the small amount of rubber touching.

[Felicitatem Parco]

And they're all coated in heatsinks...